


The Garden of Iron Wrought

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Spoilers for 5:01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 07:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag for 5:01.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Garden of Iron Wrought

They keep secrets still, overgrown and dark, private gardens that never see the light; where the blossoms bloom fragile and lay venomous.  Peter never tells Olivia about the child he lost, the rationale brutal because he can’t mourn what (or _who_ ) he never met.  But it’s an idea planted in the back of his mind - seeded by September - and as with any idea, it has a life of its own.  Grows upward, tangles into nooks and crannies. He had a boy once upon a time and now he has a girl - and he swears to himself he won’t lose her – won’t have Etta misplaced or written over.  He just never counted on being misplaced himself.

 _I always thought I was four,_ Etta whispers, and her eyes shine.  The touch between mother and daughter is firm, supportive.  Olivia doesn’t leave bruises on her skin, doesn’t crush Etta to her chest.  They breathe against one another.

_You were three years old, one month, five days._

He can't look away from them.  It's possible Etta inherited Peter’s childhood propensity – the knack for losing sense of time - but she looks so much like her mother, so perfect, that he thinks it's more likely she inherited Olivia’s memory. A one year difference from Olivia’s recall to Etta’s, from the moment she was snatched from the park and vanished, leaving the ground bloody with dissent.

Peter’s not a soldier.  He never cared for war.  He drifts in the opposite direction, avoids conflict by virtue of never being there.  It’s a brutal rationale, but the only promise he intended to keep was the one he made to himself.  Find his little girl – to hell with everyone else.  (He doesn’t stop loving Olivia, will never stop loving Olivia, but he can’t see past the eerie echo, the resemblance he once teased them for – and is now like a hole to his chest - Peter can’t see one without imagining the other)

He steps back, stands away.  He catches Astrid’s eye, mother and daughter huddled on the floor and for the first time in twenty years, he has his family, he can breathe.  He couldn’t follow Olivia to New York when she asked, he wasn’t ready to put aside his promise.  He can feel something realign, grief and so much reverence packed together.  It feels like awe and tastes like salt.

 

 

***

 

Olivia travelled to New York three months after the Observer’s arrived.  The streets were empty.  The first purge eliminated the bulk of the city population and in the aftermath curfew was strictly employed.  She carried a single backpack, a disposable cell with Walter’s number pre-programmed and a photograph of Etta.  She carried with her memories of Nina and Rachel, weekend journeys to the New York museum of Art, being allowed to swallow the froth from Nina's cappuccino.  Olivia lost more than half of her history when she accepted Peter into her life, but the remainder never left, a soft blur of affection, places that she had been to and the people she had loved, the city she grew up in.   

Olivia carried with her a gun (two, to be honest) and the thought of Phillip Broyles, who had stood tall behind his desk and told Olivia, Walter, and Astrid to run.  She doesn’t think of Peter, compartmentalised and locked away.  In her private garden, it’s always the wrought iron set, three seats laid out squarely and one empty.  In her private garden, Olivia leans forward on her knees and whispers _You made promises to me, too._ (It’s not hate.  It will take Peter a long time to realise – but it was never hate - it’s disappointment).  It’s having to derive comfort solely from Walter’s voice and a single photograph of her girl.  The things Olivia thought she could rely on shattered.

They lost a child.  It’s not a secret. Not even particularly unique.  But it is an asthma attack, sealing her throat.  Olivia can only offset it with the knowledge children are _still_ being lost, adults and parents, too.  That it won’t stop. It won’t miraculously go away unless someone makes a stand.  Having something to fight _for_ is what keeps Olivia sane – it _is_ a secret, a thread of shame – because she has no intention of becoming Elizabeth.  And as she watched Peter in those first months, battering against self-loathing, Olivia thinks if she had stayed with him she might have been.  Going to New York was a relief (escape) Olivia knew from the off-set he'd never follow.

Etta’s face is heart-shaped, not as narrow as Olivia’s own, her skin warm, cheeks wet. She's achingly alive.  Peter used to tease they could have been twins, and Olivia was amazed he never saw his own resemblance.  As a child, Peter’s blueprints were written all over Etta, the colour of her eyes, the roundness of her cheeks, the grin.  How her fingers were in _everything._   He was blind to it – blind now - and Olivia thinks its because parents only see the best part of their children, and for Peter, the best part was always Olivia. She never hated him – the final thought that followed her into amber, _what of the promises you made to me?_ – Olivia bore them for twenty years in her garden of iron wrought, her three chairs laid out vacantly.  

Standing side-by-side as their daughter contacts the resistance, Olivia shakes her head, twines her fingers in Peter's own, and is ready for a new thought.    

 

 

 

***

 


End file.
